DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I found you on Google and I had some questions:

1: Why is it my husband always tells me I’m not attracted to him (even tho I’m always touching and loving on him and telling him he’s handsome and so on)

2: Why does my husband constantly start a fight to try to get me to sleep with him like I don’t mean to but I always unintentionally forget to be intimate with him, like it literally slips my mind.

And 

3: Why does the constant fighting and him accusing me of cheating even though I’m by his side all the time, make it easier to forget about our intimacy?

Center Cannot Hold

DEAR CENTER CANNOT HOLD: I have a lot of questions for you, CCH, because what starts out like an unfortunate but explicable conflict gets weird by the second question. But, as with many letters like yours, it’s best to roll it from the top. So to start with, why does your husband keep saying you’re not attracted to him? There’re a few possibilities here. One is simply that you two aren’t speaking the same language, as it were. The book “The 5 Love Languages” gets a lot of stick in circles for being… let’s be generous and say religion-focused, but there’re germs of truth to it. One of the things that is vital in any relationship – sexual, romantic or platonic – is clear and effective communication. And part of effective communication means speaking in the language that your partner actually understands.

One of the conflicts I see crop up fairly often is when two people are expressing love and affection for one another, but they’re doing it in ways that the other person doesn’t necessarily hear. Someone who expresses love and caring for others via nurturing behaviors – cooking and feeding them, for example – may get frustrated when their partner doesn’t recognize that this is what they’re doing. To them, this is just the division of household responsibilities, or just something their partner likes doing. On the other hand, someone who expresses love by giving gifts or providing opportunities for their loved ones may be confused when the recipient of their affections feels manipulated; the off-put partner may have issues surrounding financial independence and self-sufficiency, and feels like someone giving them gifts is creating a sense of obligation or is trying to show off.

So if you’re someone who expresses love or attraction via physical touch or though saying the words, and your husband isn’t someone who receives love that way, then there could be a disconnect between what you’re saying and what he’s hearing. You are shouting “love” at the top of your lungs, but that’s not what he’s hearing. To overcome this problem, you’d want to discuss precisely what ways you could express your attraction to him in ways that he would prefer or understand – does he need something that you’re not providing? Is there’s some way of expressing affection and attraction that he would see as being more ‘real’, rather than just standard husband/wife behavior?

Another potential cause is that it’s not you, it’s him. He may not feel like he’s attractive, and he has some deep core of anxiety or depression that’s acting like a sort of emotional desert. You can pour out all the love and affection you want, but it just soaks into the ground or evaporates into the air without ever nourishing life. It’s not that you aren’t showing him that you’re attracted in a real and measurable way, it’s that he can’t accept it. It’s sort of like feeling as though the person saying “of course I think you’re hot” or “I love you” is going through the motions, just saying words out of habit or a sense of obligation. Until he feels that he is attractive and desirable – or feels worthy of being desired – then it never soaks in.

In cases like these, then the matter’s pretty much out of your hands. You can’t love someone out of depression, no matter how hard you try. Nor for that matter, can you convince someone that they’re desirable if they aren’t feeling it; the brain’s just too good at creating reasons why your saying it just doesn’t “count”. And while validation from others, who presumably don’t have the supposed “obligation” you do can push that feeling back, the relief it brings is always temporary. The external validation won’t ever fill the hole at the center of his self-concept; the only person who can truly fill that hole is him. Solving this problem is a question of therapy and counseling. If he’s dealing with depression, he may need medication in addition to talk therapy. If he’s dealing with other issues involving his self-esteem or self-perception, then hey may need to drill deep into the underlying causes; the low self esteem tends to be a symptom, rather than a discrete problem.

But there’s a third potential cause that crops up in your second and third question: he seems to feel like he’s not getting enough sex. In some ways, this wraps back around to the first potential conflict; if sex and a sexual connection is a vital part of how he expresses and/or receives love, then verbal validation or physical (but not necessarily sexual) touch isn’t going to be the same. And to be fair to you, he seems to be going about expressing his frustration in the worst and least productive way possible.

However, this brings me back to my questions for you, starting with “what do you mean ‘you forget to have sex with him’?” That’s not a question asked out of disbelief. I’m literally unsure just what you mean. Did the two of you agree to a particular schedule (or have one imposed by him, for that matter) and you keep forgetting and ending up going to bed early or having scheduling conflicts? Do you have to plan out times to have sex in advance (something some couples do, either by choice or out of necessity) and then it slips your mind as though you forgot to enter it in your Google calendar? Or is sex simply not a priority for you, so you tend to not think about it and – as a result – don’t have as much sex with your husband? Are you someone who simply doesn’t have much of a sex drive? Or are you prone to just taking care of things yourself when you get the urge, rather than sleeping with your husband?

Your third question – about the fights and accusations – is easy to answer, in part because of how it ties into this: his behavior’s a turn-off to you. It’s kinda hard to get in a sexy mood when your partner’s constantly accusing you of cheating – even when there’s no actual way that infidelity could happen. If he was accusing you of trying to poison him when you made dinner, you’d quit wanting to cook at all than deal with the fights about it. Small wonder you’re “forgetting” to sleep with him; his behavior is the Anti-Sex Equation. Why would you want to sleep with someone who just keeps telling you that you’re doing something wrong, even when you’re trying to solve the very problem he was complaining about.

Incidentally, this leads to my next question for you: what do you mean by “starting a fight to get you to sleep with him”. Is he getting upset that you two aren’t having sex and he complains or starts haranguing you about it? Is he trying to have discussions about your lack of sexual intimacy and it just turns into arguments because he has a hard time understanding or believing that you just forgot – again, whatever that means in this case? Is he literally trying to badger you into bed – “You said that if I did X, you’d do Y” or “It’s been three weeks and I’m owed” or something equally anti-sexy?

Another question: is this conflict something that started recently, or has this been growing over months or even years? If the sexual connection you two have (or had) has decreased without warning or explanation (either gradually or all of the sudden), then it’s at least somewhat understandable that he leapt to “my wife is having an affair”. It’s not necessarily logical and has far more to do with insecurity than reality, but I can at least understand how his mind went there. It’s not helpful – in fact, his behavior is the definition of “counterproductive” under the best of circumstances – but I could understand the thought processes that lead there.

I’d also be curious as to what you’ve done as a couple to try to resolve this – if anything. It doesn’t sound like you have – I imagine you’d have mentioned things like couple’s counseling if you had. If it’s all been just the two of you (or just, y’know, you) trying to fix things amongst yourselves, then it may well be time to pull a trained third party in to help mediate things. I would strongly suggest you two go in for couple’s counseling with a sex-positive counselor to help facilitate the conversations that clearly need to happen here. If you don’t have a counselor already, the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists has a referral directory on their site that can help you find a sex-positive couple’s counselor in your area. Make an appointment and hie thyselves to the counselor’s office as quick as you can. If nothing else, having someone act as a translator and mediator can hopefully help the two of you hear and understand each other without the dialogue collapsing into more fights.

And while you’re there… consider scheduling some sessions on your own, either with that counselor or another one. This – to put it mildly – doesn’t sound like a healthy situation for you, and talking to a counselor on your own could help you determine if this is a solvable problem, or if it’s a “get the f--k out of Dodge” situation. It can be hard to see when a problem’s gone on for so long that it’s gone septic and needs to be drained and treated… or if the problem isn’t the relationship but the person. If you’ve been putting in good faith efforts to try to fix things and your husband’s response is to just pick fights and force the issue regarding sex… well, that’s not marriage that needs to be fixed, that’s a marriage that needs to end. Like, yesterday.

The sooner you figure these things out, the sooner you’ll come to a solution. It may just be a question as to whether there’s a failure to communicate, a difference of libidos that needs accommodations from everyone involved, or if this marriage is already over and someone (you, most likely) needs to put it out of its misery.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: recently confessed to a cute new guy at my school, we share the same class, our class in particular has a groupchat on a messaging with all our classmates inside. Prom is coming up and he asked someone else(let’s call her Elise) who is a known aromantic and not really likeable.

After my confession to him in his DMs, he replied by saying I was super cute and asked me out to prom(in which I said yes), but thinks that we should keep it a secret because of how awkward it would be if everyone knew. We were really close friends before my confession, but after I confessed, he immediately stopped talking to me during school and would only text me. He wouldn’t directly ignore me but he’d avoid me and avoid conversations.

In art class, he hung around Elise and everyone started to ship them together as a couple, and he continued to hang around her and approach her. I’m a little jealous but he did tell me when I confessed to him, that he only asked Elise out for fun, that it was nothing serious. The thing was, he asked her to prom in the class groupchat, while he told me to keep it a secret.

I gave him paper roses I made late last night, and just put it on his table when no one was there, everyone started teasing him and saying Elise made it for him, which I felt a little heartbroken at that time. A few hours later, my friend has told him that I was the one who made the flowers, not Elise. He just said “ok” and had no reaction.

My question is, is he playing me/am I a backup plan? Or does he truly like me?

High School Drama Club

DEAR HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA CLUB: I’m not a fan of just “confessing” one’s feelings, HSDC. It’s the sort of thing that makes for drama in CW teen shows and shoujou manga, but in real life it’s not terribly helpful. Leaving aside the framing – as though being attracted to someone is something that needs to be “confessed”, like it’s a secret shame – what you’re doing is functionally offloading responsibility onto the person you’re confessing to. You’re telling the other person “hey, I have these feelings about you. Now go do something with them.” Even under the best of circumstances, you’re essentially asking somebody to decide in that moment whether they want to explore a relationship with you. Not a lot of people are going to want to make a snap decision like that, especially if you two don’t have much of a relationship beforehand.

This is why I prefer just asking someone out on a date. To start with, it’s a much easier lift to decide if you want to go on a date than to decide if you feel the same way about someone in that moment. Dating is essentially a way of determining if you both think there is enough there to make a relationship work and if you’re compatible on that level. Asking someone on a date gives them something they can say “yes” to without feeling like they’re committing to a great unknown. Plus, the “I like you” is part of the ask; people rarely ask folks out on dates if they’re not at least somewhat attracted to the other person.

Now that rant aside, let’s talk about what’s going on here.

If I have the timeline correct, it sounds like your crush asked Elise to prom before you told him you liked him. Now, going to prom with someone isn’t exactly a promise of a lifelong commitment, but it does make telling him after he publicly asked her something of a bad move on your part. Even without some of the other issues – and we’ll get to those in a moment – you’re asking him to take backsies on his prom invite, and that’s not a great position to put somebody into. Suddenly turning around and saying “you know what, never mind, I got a better offer” is rude at best. So if he likes you back… well, his choices are either coldly drop her like fifth period French or go to the dance with someone else even though he’d supposedly rather go with you. Again: great for teen dramas on streaming, not so great for real life.

But it’s the rest of what you say that makes me think that maybe you should just let this one go. Whether Elise is aromantic or not – known or otherwise – is kinda irrelevant. The fact that he supposedly asked her out for the LOLs is… well, that’s kind of a dick move. It’s one thing to ask someone to prom when you’re friends and you’re going AS friends. Asking someone, again, publicly, as a goof? That’s just cruel.

That is, admittedly, assuming that is what he did. Because the whole “hey I like you too, but let’s keep this on the down low” part? That seems like someone who’s either playing you for laughs, or who wants to have his cake and eat it too. There can be legitimate reasons to say “hey, let’s keep our relationship secret for now”, but they’re relatively few and far between. And going by the way he’s behaving? Well… I’m going to go with “doesn’t have good reasons for this”. The fact that he says he likes you in private but ignores you in public while cozying up to someone who he supposedly asked out as a joke doesn’t say good things about him. Either he’s lying to her – which, again, is cruel – or he’s lying to you, which is dickish. And if he really is hoping to keep you as his backup choice in case he doesn’t have the magic wand that’ll turn Elise from being aromantic into a lovey-dovey dance partner? Then that’s even more dickish.

And if he’s hoping to have it both ways – something public with his aromantic friend and you as his sidepiece on the down low so he can get his rocks off? Well that’s beyond dickish and well into “called shot to the balls” with workboots territory.

While I don’t expect teenagers in high-school to be the most adept at handling nuanced relationship issues, none of this sounds good. His words say one thing and his actions say another. When you have a dichotomy like that, you should believe the actions. And his actions say that either he’s not into you, or you’re his fallback plan at best. At worst, he’s playing both of you.

Do yourself a favor: chalk this up to a learning experience. Some guys seem nice but end up being a classic Crouching Nice Guy/Hidden Douchecanoe who think they’re slick enough to keep multiple balls in the air without dropping them or letting the others know. If the way he’s acting isn’t who he really is, then he’s got terminally poor judgement and a lot of growing up to do. If it is a representative of his true self? Well, not dating him is a bullet dodged and a lesson learned.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My ex and I broke up a couple months ago; we were together 2 years and six months. She broke up with me because she said that I was manipulating her, even though I wasn’t and if I did it wasn’t on purpose. After this we stopped talking for a month. When I saw her again, she told me that I wasn’t manipulating her and that her friends told her that I was and just a lot of things that didn’t make sense. After that we stopped talking. Then we went to a football game and saw each other by accident and we talked and she said that she was sorry about it. When I told her I forgave her, she asked if we can try again. I said I don’t know.

After that day, we went to a dance and we talked about what happened and just danced with each other and kissed, then I made up my mind that I wanted to try again. But now every time I see her with friends, she just doesn’t seem like she wants to but after all that when we are alone she either ignores me or just talks to me about us like she wants to be together.

I feel like I am being lead on. Can you help me Doc?

Please, I want to try with her but I don’t know what she wants and she wont tell me. What should I do?

Running Hot and Cold

DEAR RUNNING HOT AND COLD: So, unlike a previous letter about relatively explicable and understandable behavior, I feel like pointing out that these are some actual mixed signals.

When you’re dealing with actual mixed signals – where either words and deeds don’t line up or someone says one thing one day, says another the next and then goes back to the first on yet another day – there’re two likely reasons. Either the person sending those conflicting signals is confused or doesn’t know what they want, or they’re playing head games with you.

The problem is… neither of these are great.

Now, I’m going to assume – and this may be an overly generous assumption – that you told her you wanted to try again. If you hadn’t… well, then there’s your problem. You need to actually say the words, and make it clear where you stand. But if you have and this is what you’ve ended up dealing with? Well, then I’m going to say that this ain’t a great scene for you.

Let’s start with what kicked the whole mess off: your girlfriend dumped you because “you were manipulating her”. Except, apparently, you weren’t the one manipulating her, her friends apparently were, or at least were the ones telling her that you were. Now, this wouldn’t be the first time friends have interfered with someone’s relationship for seemingly bizarre reasons, whether with good or malign intentions. Maybe they didn’t like how much time you were spending with her and conspired to break you up so she would have more time for them. Maybe they watched the wrong TikTok videos and the tendency to misuse and abuse legitimate psychological terms like “gaslighting”, “lovebombing” and “trauma dumping” lead them to think that normal relationship behavior was somehow toxic. Or maybe they had legitimate worries about her and were calling out what they saw as real problems in good faith.

Ultimately though, that doesn’t matter as much as how your now-ex responds once the truth was revealed. And it seems that… well, not much has changed. She says she wants you back. Her actions (at least in a few places) suggest she wants you back. But she either doesn’t make a move, acts like she’s not interested or otherwise seems to go every which way. And that’s a problem.

See, one of the things about being a good potential partner is that you have good emotional intelligence and to be in decent working order. This doesn’t mean that you need to have Hannibal-like insight into people’s emotions or psychological states, nor does it mean that you can’t have any quirks, flaws or neuroticisms. It just means that you need to be in good enough mental and emotional shape to date. And right now? It doesn’t seem like your ex is.

It’s hard to say why she’s acting the way she is. You say that she acts like she’s not interested in you when she’s around her friends. Well, could it be that her friends are still on Team Someone Else? Is it possible that they’re still trying to talk her out of getting back with you? Or maybe the friends have nothing to do with it and either she took your “I don’t know” to heart. Or she might not be entirely sure, herself, and her desire to get back together flows in and out like the tides.

But at the end of the day, it ultimately doesn’t matter. Any of these reasons are big signs saying “this is a bad idea”. If her friends are still dripping poison in her ear about you, then she’s still allowing them to dictate her relationships, instead of recognizing it for the toxic friendship that it is. If she’s blowing hot and cold because she legitimately doesn’t know what she wants, then she shouldn’t be telling you “let’s try again” one day and then giving you the cold shoulder the next; she should be trying to figure out her own mind instead of making it your problem. And if it’s that she took your “I don’t know” as the last word… well, either she’s playing a very weird game or she’s almost absurdly fickle.

One of the things I always tell people when they want to know if they should get back with their ex is that if the reason that they broke up in the first place hasn’t changed, then all they’re going to do is end up in the 12″ dance remix of their first break up; it’ll just be faster and have a more driving beat. And going by what you’ve said here, nothing has really changed. Either she’s stuck with toxic and manipulative friends, has poor boundaries or simply doesn’t know what she wants. That combined with her constant routine of “Come here, go away, come here” is enough for me to say that she’s not in a place where she’s in good shape to date. If her boundaries are just that poor, it’s a bad sign. If she doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to know her own mind enough to decide what she wants before telling you she wants you back (maybe), then that’s a bad sign.

If you’ve told her you want to try again and she’s acting like this? Then the best thing you can do is take her non-committal behavior as an answer and the answer is “no”. Even if it isn’t a no, you should move on; quite frankly, this will just end up being more confusion and headaches for you, and for no purpose whatsoever. I know you want her back, but taking her back when she’s acting like this will just leave you back where you are now: confused, frustrated and nursing a broken heart. Better to take the clean break and let yourself heal than to commit to a second, slow break up that’ll take that much longer for you to recover from.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com